world building | No Wasted Ink

Before we get into the meat of the subject I’m assuming you’ve read Strunk and White and learned grammar and studied Steven King’s On Writing and learned how to craft content. If not those specific tomes then I’ll presuppose you’ve read, and devoured, similar. It all comes down to this, world building isn’t where you start your journey as a writer. You need to have the basics well in place before you throw yourself off this mountain.

When you create the world your characters are going to live in it can be something simple, like Toledo, Ohio, or something amazing like the gas clouds of Orbius Prime. No matter which, you’ll need ground rules to get started.

Let’s say you picked Toledo; you’ll need to mention the Mud Hens, the city’s devotion to sausages, the national museum of the great lakes, lunch at Grumpy’s and so on.
If you picked the gas clouds of Orbius Prime, then you need to let readers know about how light refracts in the gasses, what does , and does not, work as a means of propulsion, whether or not the beings living there are corporeal, and how communication is achieved. I would assume varying shades of illumination would work best, but you have options.

In other words, it’s not just a name you toss out it’s a place you bring to life. When the reader closes the book they should feel like they were there. Maybe even bought some souvenirs.

I have found that detailing the world I’ll be creating first, and then adding characters works best. I didn’t do that for my first novel and ended up having to go back and do so since there were glaring inconsistencies in locations and tone. I, literally, had a desiccated desert near a lake.

Before you ask, yes, that was a huge pain in the ass.

So, to save yourself the irritation, lay things out in a simple graph.

Where: Name your place and then detail, at least, ten things which make this place unique.
When: Based on a current reader’s perspective, is this something that happened before or after their existence. If it’s current, try and avoid pop culture references. Since they won’t be current when your book comes out they immediately place the story in the reader’s past.
Tech: It’s well known that any tech sufficiently advanced enough would appear to be magic to a less developed society. The same holds true in writing. If you introduce the “multi phased Frombulator” you have to be clear as to what it does, why it exists, and be able to give a rudimentary idea of how it works. You need not get into the physics of the thing, unless you feel it’s required, but you do have to be able to make readers believe it could exist. Contrariwise, if you’re setting is medieval Europe, you can’t give the princess a Buick to make her life easier. The tech you add has to fit the rest of your universe.
Consistency: Despite popular tropes, it is not the hobgoblin of little minds. Foolish consistency is. Now, whether you’re creating a magical fairy kingdom, interplanetary battles featuring alien warlords, or a whimsical a rom/com starring Satan, you need to set out the rules that guide your universe. And those rules need to apply to every character, and in every event. Remember, it’s not the suggestion of physics, those are laws for a reason. If your characters can violate them, you need a believable reason. This is less true in comic books where characters can fly unaided. Yet, even then, the rest of the universe follows basic physics leaving the flying people as outliers.

One easy out from all this, that lazy writers like to use, is to create a universe of gods. Since their characters are all gods they can do whatever they want. Unless you have multiple iterations of Yahweh, that won’t fly. And if you do, where’s the conflict? Even Satan doesn’t directly challenge God. In fact, in many interpretations, he’s fulfilling a function required by God. So, you’re back to needing some rules, and characters to live within them.

Another thing to look out for is accidentally creating multiple generations of morons. A wildly popular series of books, and a related TV show, have characters who, according to numerous plot points, have been at war, and fighting dragons, for eight thousand years. In that time the only weapons they have come up with are variants of a pointy stick. Some large, some small, some metal, some wood, but, at the end of the day, they’re all just pointy sticks. You would think that, given the fact there were constant airborne threats, someone might have given artificial flight a try. All of the needed materials are right there. And the inspiration is literally eating their livestock.

However, there was also an abundance of naked boobs, so that made up for a lot.

World building can be, and is to me, fun. There are lots of guides you can use to help they’re just not marketed as such. Books on mythologies will help you create believable powerful beings. Dungeons and Dragons is a great guide for your magical realm. NASA.gov has tons of free research online that will help you build realistic alien homes. And, if you want to bend some brains, don’t neglect the various conspiracy sites.

Once you have your feet firmly on the ground, let your imagination loose and see what it brings home.

BILL McCORMICK is a critically acclaimed author of several novels, graphic novels, comic book series, and has appeared in numerous anthologies. He began writing professionally in 1986 for the Chicago Rocker Magazine in conjunction with his radio show on Z-95 (ABC-FM) and went on to write for several other magazines and blogs. He currently writes a twisted news & science blog at WorldNewsCenter.org. That provides source material for his weekly appearance on The Big Wakeup Call on WBIG 1280 AM (FOX! Sports). You can find out more about him at BillMcSciFi.com.

Splice by Bill McCormack

In February, I attended Capricon, a speculative fiction convention that took place in the Chicago suburbs. It was fun. Some of those attending were writers who gave readings or spoke on panels, but Tobias Buckell, the guest of honor, was the only well-known author there. Mostly, it was a fan convention, and the writers at the con also saw themselves as fans. Attendees could wear costumes, browse the art show, shop in the dealer room, experiment with the starship bridge simulator, and join in role-play gaming.

Afterwards it occurred to me that these local speculative fiction cons are everywhere, particularly if you count ComicCons. Speculative fiction is not the most widely read genre. That honor belongs to romance. Yet spec fic seems to have the most fan conventions. I started to speculate (pun intended) on why that should be so.

I suggest two reasons. First, world-building is a strong element in the genre, and a desire to explore or even live in those author-built worlds is common. Second, in spec fic, the line between writers and fans is thin and porous. The genre seems to encourage creative play, and conventions nourish it.

The Importance of the World

I can think of speculative fiction set in, say, Chicago. For example, Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files series features a magician/detective operating in my fair city, though it’s a city that’s altered by the presence of paranormal beings. But it’s very common for both science fiction and fantasy to set their stories in worlds that the author creates more or less from scratch. Those worlds can be future space colonies or kingdoms that never existed or a huge variety of other options.

For spec fic fans, such world-building is important. They want to be lifted out of their everyday world and transported elsewhere. They fantasize about what it would be like to be the characters they read about and live in those worlds. That’s why Universal Studios can have a Harry Potter World that people rush to visit, while they don’t have, say, a Jack Reacher World, despite the popularity of Lee Child’s mystery series.

Fan conventions offer readers or movie/TV viewers the chance to live for a day or two in a bit of their favorite pretend world, even if it’s only in a minor way. That’s one thing those costumes are about. Conference-goers slip into character and tacitly agree to respect one another’s fun. Want to wear that Gryffindor jacket hiding in your closet? A con is your chance.

Overlap Between Writers and Readers

The second and most important element enabling spec fic cons is the overlap between writers and readers. In a way that undermines the pretenses of the Artist with a capital A, the genre seems to encourage breaking down the barrier between those who create art and those who consume it.
Some of the attendees were literally writers or podcast producers or graphic novel designers. But among story creators, I think you have to count the role play gamers who create characters and lead them through adventures. You also have to count the folks in costumes who are acting out their own stories.
In an utterly delightful way, spec fic seems to encourage play and creativity, and fan conventions are the result.
Other Genres Can Share the Fun

As I thought about this, I couldn’t see why spec fic readers should be the only ones to have this kind of fun, though it’s true that some genres lend themselves more than others. Regency romance? Those fans are enthusiastic and can probably think of apt costumes and games. Historical fiction has many of the same opportunities for costume and world that spec fic does, and a historian friend says she does occasionally see someone in costume at their big conference.

It seems to me that what holds us back from widening the fan convention world is that we are embarrassed to be caught pretending. We think we’re too old to play. But to me, a reader is always pretending for a while. You’re always imagining that you’re someone else, living another life. That’s not embarrassing. That’s good. It’s enriching.

So here’s advice for readers of all genres: Go forth and play!

Dorothy A. Winsor writes young adult and middle-grade fantasy. Her novels include Finders Keepers (Zharmae, 2015), Deep as a Tomb (Loose Leave Publishing, 2016), The Wind Reader (Inspired Quill, 2018), and The Wysman (June, 2020). At one time, Winsor taught technical writing at Iowa State University and GMI Engineering & Management Institute (now Kettering). She then discovered that writing fiction is much more fun and has never looked back. She lives in Chicagoland.